Page 43 of Serpent King's Revenge

I hauled myself to my feet, still cuffed and shackled, but conscious enough to at least try to escape. This might be my last shot–and if I knew Abby, she would be somewhere in this mess, probably in the thick of it. I tried to make a run for it, stumbling, staggering.

Pain seared at the back of my head and my vision swam.

Ears rang.

I fell to the ground, wondering if I’d been shot. It had happened once before…but it hadn’t felt quite like this. No, this pain was in my head, pounding and screaming…

Diane Hayes walked around in front of me.

“Your father won’t let them take you,” she said, lining up her shot. I watched her cock her gun, point it at my head. “And if you’re with the insurgents…well, he said he’d rather see you dead.”

Fuck.

This had quickly gone from a prison break, to a battle…to an execution.

And now I was on the chopping block.

Chapter Nineteen: Abby

This was our shot.

The Sisterhood of Vipers had put everything in place–planted nurses in the prison to loop Nathan in, planted guards. The nurses said that he’d been injured, and that wasn’t part of the plan…but it gave us an opportunity to feed him more information.

The problem? That beating had seemed planned.

And I was starting to wonder if Kenny meant to kill him rather than give him back to me.

We followed Kenny’s men from San Francisco, hiding along the side of the highway as they hid from the approaching convoy. This was going to be a real fucking clusterfuck–but at this point, we didn’t have any choice. In the chaos, we would swoop in and grab Nathan, and maybe even take some enemy Serpents out in the process.

I was pregnant and about to jump in to a full-on gang war.

Fantastic.

I sat in the shadows of the redwoods with my pistol at the ready, Knuckles Chen beside me. We’d come up with all of this together–along with Alex, Jack, and Xinyi Linbut I still didn’t quite trust him. For now, he was a useful tool to get Nathan out, to get us safe. He glanced over at me, eyes darting to my weapon.

“So…” he said.

I gave him a discerning look. “Mmhm?”

“You’re not just an art student, are you?”

I snorted, shaking my head. “No…I’m not just an art student.”

“And what are you?”

I chewed on my lip. “That’s my business.”

“Given I’m about to walk into a firefight with you, I think it’s my business, too.”

I laughed. “Okay…fair enough. But you have to promise not to freak out.”

“Go for it.”

“Alright then. FBI. Or…ex-FBI. I think that ship has definitely sailed at this point.”

He didn’t say anything, so I looked back at him. Knuckles was just staring at me, head tilted. “Does Nathan know?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “We already had a knife fight about it, then kissed and made up.”

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